Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant

Wilfred Owen makes his well-known introduction to a 1920 collection of his poems: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity." I was half way through Grant’s memoirs when his next line came to mind: "This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of the......more

I read Grant's memoirs some decades ago. Heather Cox Richardson says this about U.S. Grant and his Memoirs: "[Ulysses S. Grant] was a brilliant general and ,..., a brilliant writer, who's Memoirs helped to spark the realist movement in American literature, but he was never welcome in Washington's es......more

Within the genre of memoirs, I've always had the impression that this book stands out as a historically significant example. Mark Twain even maintained that it should be considered equal in profoundness to Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico, (Commentaries on the Gallic Wars.) In the late 1......more

It will be a long time before I don't hear Grant's voice in my head. This book shattered all the preconceptions and stereotypes that made up my understanding of this man. He speaks so freely of his fearfulness, until the day that fear finally becomes so commonplace in his hours that he forgets to no......more

I don't suppose this memoir is on too many people's summer reading list but I became intrigued with Grant after visiting the cottage in New York where he spent the last days of his life finishing this memoir. He was suffering terribly from throat cancer but had hopes that the revenue generated from......more